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More Bandwidth Than You Can Use?

May 28, 2007

We've been here before. In 1999, there were fewer than 2 million people in the U.S. subscribing to either DSL or cable broadband. By the end of 2006, that number exceeded 51 million, says the Dallas consultancy Parks Associates. Meanwhile, prices have come down. In 1999, Bell Atlantic, now part of Verizon, offered consumers a high-end DSL package that topped 1.6Mbps for about $110 a month. Now it's offering 3Mbps for $30 a month.

That trend is going to repeat itself, says Parks Associates analyst Michael Cai. "You'll see more bandwidth offered at the same price you're paying now for less." The average cost of a megabit per second in 2002 was more than $26 a month, Cai says, and by last year it had dropped to $7. By 2010, it could drop as low as 80¢, making 50Mbps for $40 a month sound positively mainstream.

From the article "More Bandwidth Than You Can Use?" by Arik Hesseldahl.

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